All posts tagged: Munchies

Oh hello. Funny seeing you here at this time of night. Looks like you had a hard day? It’s almost the freakin’ weekend, so let’s get started early and chill: opium den style.

Here’s a Manhattan. I’m on my second.

If you’ve been following along recently, you know I’ve been working (here, here, here, and here) on this small-ish weird-ish room on the second floor of my house to make a cozy little den, the primary purpose of which is to watch TV and relax forever. I wanted it to be super cozy, full of things I love, and simple enough for the small size of the space but still layered and intimate—a nice little hideaway for myself and some friends if and when I procure some. For the past couple of weeks I’ve been at the futzing stage with this room, which is when I put on some back-season of my recently reignited old love, Survivor (if you don’t look up who won, you can pretend it didn’t happen 10 years ago!), and put up art and swap around chairs and lamps and take frequent breaks to collapse on the sofa because I CAN. I love how it’s come together! This room needed a lot of the same work as the recently-completed-ish bedroom, but for some reason this one felt so much easier, both to renovate and get some decor happening that I actually like. Let’s pretend it’s because I’m getting better at this, and not that I’m just HIGHLY motivated by using my TV again?

We’ll go with that.

The other night, bae came over and we broke in the opium den officially. Here’s how I like to do it:

Step 1. Order Chinese food.

Step 2. Kick back.

Step 3. Take a drink. Take a hit. Take whatever floats your boat. Not the hard stuff.

Step 4. Do that thing where you scroll through iTunes, Netflix, Hulu, and HBOGO indefinitely until you land back at the thing you wanted to watch in the first place. We bought Get Out on iTunes which, sadly, I missed in theaters because I never leave the house. It always feels like a big commitment to actually purchase a movie on iTunes, and then I remember it’s less than the cost of two movie tickets. I don’t know what that’s about. Anyway.

Step 5. Receive Chinese food delivery, pig out.

So one excellent addition to my life has been that bae brings with him an impressive dowry of not one but two dogs. So essentially I have four dogs now. It’s so many dogs. I love dogs.

This is Gertie, alternately known as Officer Gert. She keeps the crew in line. She’s squat on her legs and big in her behind and does not like anyone acting up or seeming like they might be thinking about acting up. Gertie spends all day taking care of Linus: cleaning his face and ears and sometimes a part of his back she seems particularly fond of, and steps in when the other dogs get rowdy too close to him.

Linus. Linus! He needs a grooming. I love and cherish when he’s more of a muppet, but this is about as long as his hair can get without curls starting to mat.

That is, by the way, the best dog in the world. I don’t play favorites but yes I do and Linus is my favorite. It’s been five whole yearssince that guy stumbled into my life, which makes him around 15 years old now. I think that means Linus needs a whole separate post because otherwise I’ll get carried away, but man. My little man. Still trucking.

This is Fox’s ear, because his face is buried in my sweatpants’d crotch. It’s pretty much where he lives unless he’s running around causing terror. Fox is not an actual fox but rather an oversized Papillion who looks a lot like a fox. Also, bae shares my everlasting love of TheX-Files, so. Fox.

Fox and Mekko are inseparable. Poor Mekko used to just have Gertie and Linus who are no fun as playmates, and now she has Fox who is a little too much fun. He’s such an annoying younger brother. I love him.

Bae is in the background there. He likes a striped hoodie and long walks on the beach. Calm down.

We’ll talk way more about the room when I can show you in daylight, because night photos are tricky and I feel like we need the light of day to really appreciate things like that bright orange naked lady in her guilded frame. Anyway, this corner of the sofa I think is the most comfortable place in the house. The seat portion of the sofa is pretty much the size of a twin bed, which is honestly kind of too amazing, in that I want to live on it. That discontinued IKEA lamp dims and gives off great light—I’m glad I found a spot where I like it! I love that lamp but it’s never landed anywhere that it felt right before.

Gertie’s favorite spot in the house is sprawled on this sheepskin across the back of the sofa, which comes from the fairly new-to-me company, Article! Especially if your style leans more modern, do yourself a favor and scroll through their products—so much good stuff (big and small!) and really well-priced. This sheepskin is perfect here because it’s almost exactly as long as the back of the sofa, wide enough that it can be draped over the back but stays in place, and covers an otherwise noticeable dip in the back where Susan and Will’s dogs used to love to nap! It’s also super soft and cozy and adds a nice shot of texture, and it’s ethically sourced from New Zealand or Australia and non-toxic, so it should last for decades. The sofa itself is a well broken-in black leather, and I really dig the combo of dark browns and off blacks in here. I know it’s a faux pas maybe and I don’t care!

Also I have been carting around that pillowcase since HIGH SCHOOL because I loved it and held out hope that someday it would look good somewhere. It brings me joy so leave me alone about it. It’s originally from IKEA.

I’m not really a fan of most scented things, but I love (LOOOVVVVE) some Palo Santo wood to burn as incense. I scaled back my candle game for the purposes of not looking crazy in pictures on the internet, but it can get reallllll witchy up in here. Sticks burning, candles everywhere, lamps dimmed down or off…yes. I aim to be as witchy as possible during relaxation time.

By the way, back behind my weird piece of thrift store pottery in the foreground, there’s a little notepad and a pen, which I’ve realized I have some version of around me at all times. I make notes constantly of ideas or little sketches or lists, because otherwise it’s all just in my head and it makes me crazy? So I write a lot of stuff down. I’m really opening up here, I don’t know.

Also, that chair back there is my womb chair, which I was lucky enough to inherit when my parents downsized! I thought it would be too big in here, but it ended up feeling just right. It’s been in a few different places in the house, but so far I like it in here best. This seems to be a theme with this room! I’m not really sure why. Do dark rooms kind of decorate themselves?

Lighting that corner behind the chair was a challenge (you know, the kind with zero stakes)—even though I have tons of lamps, not a single one of them felt right! It always felt too bright and too directed either down at the chair or up at the ceiling, and I just wanted something very slim and simple with a soft light. The Rise floor lamp—also from Article—ended up being pretty perfect! It comes in white too, but I love how the matte black finish of the shade disappears with the wall color to keep the corner from feeling too crowded. Having never bought anything Article before I wasn’t sure what to expect from the quality, but it really is excellent! The shade swivels around to any direction you want, and the height adjusts, and the whole thing is very sturdy on a heavy substantial base. It turns off with a push-button on cord at floor height, which is great since it’s a slightly awkward squeeze to lean in and turn something on at the top. I’m into it illuminating a painting—just enough light bounces off the painting and the wall for the corner to feel super inviting and not like a black hole. For now I’m enjoying this strange painting I found in the trash. I don’t know what’s going on with this guy but I figure I’ll stare at it for a while and try to figure it out. I move art around like a crazy person.

Oh yeah, that cabinet. Whipped it up one fine Sunday a couple weeks ago. It was really fun. And I finally used some of my lath!! It sorta made me want to abandon most of my other goals to play with lath all day instead. We’ll discuss more soon.

The movie, by the way? SO GOOD. I’m glad I bought it so I can watch it again. Which I already did.

Thank you for stopping by! And thank you to Julia and Kim for bringing me in on the A Night In series fun! It wouldn’t really occur to me to take artificially lit photos at midnight, because I am blogger and we shoot always by the light of the sun, but this room was pretty much designed for Netflix & Chill so now you know what that looks like! We’ll do a day-lit reveal soon!

Want to see more bloggers betraying their secret training and showing their spaces at night? Hop on over to…

Growing up, I had a few very particular habits and hobbies, most of which entailed spending a lot of time by myself. While my siblings were out playing sports, or watching sports, or everyone was upstairs watching ESPN, or whatever else it was that my heterosexual family did, I could typically be found sitting in a room in our basement, watching hours and hours of HGTV and working on a collection of truly hideous but impressively elaborate scrapbooks. Sometimes I’d move on and build a scaled model of some house I’d dreamt up, or sketch the elevations of a renovation plan I had for one of the few remaining cute 50s ramblers that still dotted my mostly new-construction street (torn down now, sadly, because my plan was pretty slick). Every now and then, my idea of a good time was to make myself insane by organizing the garage or the basement or the laundry room or my mother’s office—really, I don’t think any space in our house escaped my clutches. Our label-maker was one of my closest confidants, and The Container Store was far and away my favorite retail conglomerate on earth. It was a sick, perverse kind of pleasure: the messier a space was, the more exciting the process of organizing it became. The act of impressing order onto the chaos made me feel so…alive. As you can tell, I’ve really made great strides toward personal change in the intervening years.

There was one space, though, that was consistently the biggest thorn in my side and light of my life, year after year. The pantry. The room was maybe somewhere around 5×8, lined with deep shelves and consistently—and, to me at least, alarmingly—unkempt. It wasn’t that it was dirty or even all that cluttered to the naked eye, but once you started really poking around, it didn’t take long to pick up on some major organizational issues. Expired boxes of cereal and cans of beans lurked behind fresh ones, and there were too few containers to wrangle the smaller or more irregular shaped items, which tended to get stuffed wherever they’d fit. Unopened boxes of last year’s Passover matzah, duplicate and triplicate jars of spices, some of them old enough that the labels had been redesigned, snacks that my siblings and I had courted for brief periods (Go-Gurt) before moving on for greener pastures (Danimals Drinkable Yogurt)—it was paradise. I’d typically spread the fun out over a few days, at which point I’d stage a big reveal and make all the members of my family admire it while explaining slowly and clearly where everything now belonged.

Like I said. Totally different person now.

I guess my point here is that I feel like my life experience has really prepared me to make a pantry of my own. I’ve seen time and again how pantries start out with the best intentions and descend into total chaos, and hopefully learned enough to avoid letting that happen to me.

Anyway, taking a little trip back in time…here’s about where we started. The pantry space takes up the footprint of an old stairwell (removed circa 1930), and prior to my work on it was divided into two closets. Busting out the wall that divided the closets and removing the (non-original) closet and doorway from the dining room was definitely the right choice, but also left behind a really strange space to work with. The pantry is 8 feet deep and only about 32″ wide, meaning that actual storage options are kind of limited since I’m basically building a pantry in a narrow hallway. It also needed mostly new walls, a refinished floor, electrical (lighting and outlets), paint, and of course shelving and stuff! Sometimes the smallest spaces are just as complicated as the big ones.

And here we go! It’s a pantry! Finally! YAY.

I know it’s really annoying when bloggers point this shit out, but some of the photos in this post were taken a few weeks ago and some were taken today (including the one above), and I’m way too lazy to style a pantry. Which is why I didn’t unwrap the plastic from my paper towel rolls. I promise Bounty isn’t paying me. They really are the quicker picker-upper, though, you know? My late-in-life discovery of washable microfiber cloths has drastically cut down on my paper towel usage, by the way, but I’m not ready to cut them out of my life entirely at this juncture.

Semi-related: since when/why is every roll individually wrapped inside the bulk-wrapped pack of 12 rolls or whatever? It’s like they’re determined to make up for being bad for the environment by being worse for the environment. Human beings are screwed.

The point is, due to what I’m now referring to as my “blogging hiatus” over the past couple of weeks (oooooops), I’ve now had a nice amount of time to actually use this space and can happily report that it WORKS. At least for me. I really don’t put any hard work or effort into keeping it clean and orderly because I think it’s pretty effectively designed to stay clean and orderly! I kind of dragged my feet about working on this space for a long time but it really has made an enormous difference to the kitchen and the way I cook and grocery shop and all of that. I’m all about my pantry.

The dimensions of the space were a major challenge, but turned out to be a great opportunity. I think probably the most common issue with pantries is that the shelves are just too deep, so things get lost and you can’t see what you actually have. Then you end up re-buying things you already have, or letting things expire, or you’re always digging for stuff…I’m totally convinced that shallow shelves are vastly superior, and luckily that’s about all this room can accommodate anyway.

Having said that, some deeper storage is definitely important as well! Most pantry items (at least the ones that I buy?) seem to be 6″ in depth or smaller, but sometimes you need a few boxes of cereal or crackers or bags of chips or whatever and so having some good deep shelves is important, too. In this space, the deeper shelving could really only go at the back…so I guess we’ll start there?

Part of the fun of this space was trying to spend as little money as possible while still making it cute and functional, which involved a lot of raiding of my scrap wood piles! I made all of the shelving out of the fir 2 x 12 framing lumber that I used for the old kitchen countertops (stained and poly’d this time around), and lots of scraps of 1-by lumber for the cleats that the deeper shelves are supported by. I decided to use wood cleats instead of large brackets just to save some money (brackets add up, even when they’re cheap!), but I’m really happy with how they turned out!

Hanging cleats for shelving is one of those things that seems sort of complicated but really isn’t. I always just figure out my shelf spacing and mark where the TOP of the cleat should sit (1 x 2 lumber works great). Then I use my mark and a level to draw pencil lines around where the cleat will go. After cutting my 1 x 2 pieces to size, I line them up with my markings and face-nail them into place with 2″ finishing nails, and then I go back in and drive some longer screws (2.5 or 3″ drywalls screws work nicely) into studs. Easy!

If I’m doing multiple shelves, I like to pre-mark all the cleat locations and then pre-cut all my pieces of wood so I can put it all up faster. Getting all these little pieces up took maybe an hour or so from start to finish.

The longest part of the process is the patching/caulking/painting, which I think just makes everything feel more finished and is worthwhile, even though it’s no fun and can feel a little overly-anal while you’re doing it. I’m used to that feeling, though. I like to just paint the cleats with whatever wall paint I’m using so they blend in. Exciting stuff.

This room is super wonky so you’re just going to have to trust me that this is all level, even though it looks nuts.

Lest you think I’m better at all of this than I am, this is my kitchen during the process! As much as I don’t love everything about this kitchen, I love that I can use and abuse it a little and it bounces back just fine. Eventually I’d like to set up a nice little shop space in the basement or garage, but for now I tend to just destroy whatever space is closest to where I’m working and deal with it later.

The deeper shelving is really comprised of two pieces of 2-by lumber, which saved me from making any complicated cuts around that plumbing chase in the corner. One piece comes out to the depth of the front of the chase (about 5.5″) and the next piece extends out 10.5″ for an overall depth of 16″. The only real thought that went into the spacing and depth was that I wanted to be able to fit the microwave back there. I don’t like having that thing taking up counter space in the kitchen, but I don’t know what I’d do without a microwave! I’m always impressed by/fearful of people who don’t have them. This one was generously donated by my pal, Anna, who consequently doesn’t have one anymore so I assume she’s starving to death whenever I’m nuking leftover Chinese food.

Before I installed the front piece of those shelves in the back, I marked and installed my shallow shelving brackets using the level of the cleats as my guide. I wanted the shelves to appear kind of continuous to cut down on any visual/physical clutter. These brackets came from Lowe’s for about $5 a pop. Using 2-by lumber meant that I could space them wider than I typically would (therefore using fewer of them), so I only needed 10 to get the job done. These brackets are nice because they can be hung two ways, so you have the option of a 6.5″-ish deep shelf or 12″-ish deep shelf depending on how you hang them.

By the way, I saved staining/poly-ing the fronts and tops of the shelving until after everything was installed, which was just easier than trying to get the stain to look good while everything was laying on sawhorses in the basement. That’s why the front of the shelves look all crappy in these pictures. I just ran my mouse sander over the fronts, did a quick staining job, and three coats of water-based poly on everything. Now the shelves look uniform and are super clean-able when they eventually start to gather dust, which happens quickly around these parts because I live in a construction zone. Not sure if you heard.

It’s hard to tell from the picture, but I installed some mending strips I had lying around on the underside where the deep shelves transition to the shallow ones. This just helped bring everything to the same level. I hit the strips with a couple coats of black spray paint before putting them up just to keep them inconspicuous and matching the black brackets.

That was really about it! Once the shelves were dry, it was time to install the outlets, touch up whatever paint on the walls I’d screwed up, and start loading in food!

Yes, by the way, I hate myself for the extreme decanting situation up in here, but I also LOVE IT. I love decanting things. I have no idea why. I think it’s a fetish. In any case, it makes me feel like I’m doing something important and worthwhile even though all I’m doing is moving things from one container into a different container. These jars are the KORKEN jars from IKEA, which are great! I like the classic shape and the rubber seal makes them effectively airtight. I’ve basically been buying a few of them every time I’ve been to IKEA in the past two years in preparation for this moment, so they never felt like a big expense even though I guess I’ve probably sunk a lot of money into having so many stupid glass jars at this point. Sometimes you just need to trick yourself that way.

There was some pretty extreme disagreement between Max and I on how the jars should be labeled. I figured a regular waterproof label would suffice, but he thought it was likely that the jars wouldn’t always be holding the same thing and wanted something more easily removable. Hence, these weird white chalk markers that go on sort of wet, become sort of dry, and look so super twee when combined with cute handwriting! I feel like such a Pinterest garbage blogger person. I’m totally incapable of writing with the pens on these jars in a way that looks at all nice or legible (I think it’s the curved surface combined with being a lefty?), so I’ll forever be reliant on Max for labeling the dry goods.

It’s so dumb and I love it so much. SUE ME.

The shallow shelves are great, though, because I can really see everything when I go to make a shopping list or, more commonly, wait until I’m starving to death and crawl into the pantry in search of some semblance of ingredients that could be potentially combined to create a meal. Back when I had all of this stuff in the deeper kitchen cabinets, this tended to involve, like, a can of anchovies, a jar of salsa, and mayonnaise, but now I can easily locate and cook some lentils to add to my desperation-recipes! So my life and nutrition has really improved by leaps and bounds.

So far, the deeper shelves at the back are possibly being under-utilized. If I go on some kind of cereal diet (I hear it’s going to be the new juice cleanse in 2016), I can always relocate the cookbooks and gain a couple more shelves? I don’t know. As long as the microwave fits. Eyes on the prize. The vintage bowls hold onions and garlic and potatoes and stuff.

One of my very favorite things in the pantry is the inside of the door! I’m obsessed with these things. I got them at The Container Store. It’s all Elfa brand (which is on sale right now!) and the baskets hang off of one central track, which is screwed into the door (you can also hang it from the top of the door with an additional piece of hardware, but I don’t know why you’d do that, really…this looks much cleaner to me). They come in a few difference widths and depths, so I put the deeper ones on the bottom for a couple frequently-used cleaning supplies, various cooking oils and stuff, and then the top ones are all for spices! For some reason it’s REALLY hard to find a decent wall-mounted spice solution and this has been working out super well. I hate having spices in a cabinet because I always end up with like 3 bottles of thyme and no crushed red pepper. Crushed red pepper comprises like 40% of my diet, so you understand the issue.

Obviously my plan is to start buying all the same brand of spices (the ones from our local grocery store chain, Adams, seem to fit particularly well) to achieve maximum consistency and creepiness. I want people to fear me when they walk into my pantry, and this just isn’t cutting it…yet. Give me a year or two and it’ll look about as approachable as a museum.

My other favorite thing? THAT DRAWER. After painting it, I just added a cheap brass sash lift to the front that I had for some reason. I feel like it’s pretty classic looking and doesn’t draw a ton of attention. It turned out a lot better and less bizarre-looking than I was expecting. Success!

The impetus for building this thing was mostly to hide the awkward plumbing chase by building out a falsely-wide front, but the drawer itself has turned out to be SUPER handy and functional. It’s really large and fits the tallest spray bottles I have and various other cleaning supplies that I don’t really want to look at but use frequently. It’s nice to have some enclosed storage in here! I ended up painting the interior of the cabinet, too, to protect the wood from spills and moisture and keep it easily cleanable.

I think that’s about it! Especially considering where this space came from, I’m really really pleased with how this turned out and how it functions. It’s made me more inclined to cook (and more efficient at it, too), not to mention freeing up some space in the kitchen and allowing me to go on a huge reorganization binge in there, too. I just can’t help myself.

Want to look back on the seemingly never-ending pantry project? I don’t because PTSD, but here’s a handy round-up for your procrastination pleasure if you’re so inclined…

You might have heard that we’re having some extreme weather in New York, what with Hurricane Sandy barreling up the coast and wreaking general havoc and inconvenience in her path. Yesterday, both NYU and Parsons announced cancellations for today, and today they’ve already announced for tomorrow. While our hearts go out to anybody and everybody who might actually be affected by the storm in any way, I’m privately and very selfishly thrilled to get a couple days to lounge around and pretend I’m a rich housewife or an agoraphobe, both long-held aspirations of mine.

Yesterday we went to the grocery store and battled huge crowds and very long lines to stock up on “the essentials.” The great (or horrifying) thing about Brooklyn is that nobody really has any idea what the essentials are, so a pretty standard shopping basket tends to hold some combination of frozen pizza, ice cream, a six-pack of beer (or more), and maybe a can of soup and a gallon of water, just because that’s what everyone else seems to be doing. People basically treat this stuff like a city-wide mandate to just stay inside and smoke pot for a couple days, which is pretty cute. Brooklynites would probably be the first to perish in a zombie apocalypse, but they’d do it with style and probably while working on a puzzle, eating kale chips, and watching Twin Peaks.

Like the rest of the borough, we have no fucking idea what to buy. For non-perishables, we basically picked up a couple cans of beans and called it a day before turning our attention to something more important/delicious: baking. We very rarely bake but something about being stuck inside has gotten us into the spirit.

We started with the Nestle Toll House chocolate chip cookie (the recipe is just on the back of the chocolate chip package, or here). A delicious classic.

While Max was making Toll House magic, I moved on to my grandma’s oatmeal raisin cookie recipe! Max isn’t a fan of these cookies, but I love them. It’s a family recipe so I’d need to get permission before posting it, but I love me some oatmeal raisin.

I also tried my hand at Post Punk Kitchen’s vegan Marbled Banana Bread, which Anna made once while we were hanging out about two years ago. It’s a super delicious recipe and very, very easy to make.

I might need to make another batch, since one slice just really isn’t enough.

We bought the dogs their own little matching American Apparel hoodies yesterday (they’re only $16!) so they could get their cozy on, and it’s pretty adorable. They are not at all concerned or anxious about the storm and I think are just enjoying having us all hang out together for a couple days.

I am a dinner person. Some people say they aren’t “breakfast people,” but I like to take that a step further because sometimes I also forget to be a “lunch person” or a “snack person” and just do most of my eating between the hours of 9 PM and 2 AM. I think this makes me what some would call an “animal.”

But sometimes on weekends, I get this itch to make breakfast. I don’t think it has much to do with hunger, but I like the process of the whole thing—the cooking, the plating, the cleaning up, the rush of pouring time and effort into something I generally regard as worthless. Afterward, it’s nice to sit around with Max and read the paper or, more accurately, not read the paper and catch up on the shows that our TV has recorded throughout the week.

The problem is that I never know what to make. Part of not being a breakfast person is that I don’t really like most breakfast foods, particularly the ones I can create myself. This includes pancakes, waffles, cereal, oatmeal, granola, yogurt, and various simple egg dishes. Give me a plate of eggs florentine at any brunch, but you can take yourself straight to hell if you think I’m about to try to make it.

But one fateful Saturday when I opened my refrigerator and surveyed the ingredients, a wave of inspiration overtook me. It was that day that I made/invented the recipe/miracle that would later come to be known simply as “delicious breakfast.” And now you can, too.

DELICIOUS BREAKFAST (serves 2-4, depending on gluttony)

2 ripe avocados
4 eggs
2 whole wheat bagels
Sriracha Sauce

Step 1: In your fridge, you will find two ripe avocados. Cut them in half and scrape out the innards into a bowl.

Depending on what else you have around, you might want to add other stuff to make this more or less like guacamole. I suggest some lime juice, some salt, some diced onion, and a whole bunch of cilantro, if you have it. I often don’t have cilantro on hand so I’ll just include as many of those ingredients as I can find and call it a day. Use your imagination. Trust your instincts. Breakfast is already the worst meal of the day so you can’t fuck it up too bad.

Aside: having a butcher block countertop is the BEST. I love it. I’ll never understand people who buy butcher block and then refuse to cut on it. That’s the fucking point. Plus, I kind of think it looks better over time, when it gets a million cut marks in it and all of a sudden your kitchen has some character and you look very dreamy and very gourmet for making all those cut marks in your countertop.

Step 2: Mash all that stuff together in a bowl with a fork. It’s OK if it’s still a little chunky. Better, actually.

Aside: buy Hass avocados. Never buy those big smooth shiny ones. You’ll say to yourself, “hey, these are half the price! Why isn’t anyone buying these large cheap avocados? Why are people so foolish with their money?” And then you will try one and you’ll understand the true meaning of evil because it will be unfolding in your mouth.

Aside-Aside: Have you heard these commercials on the radio advertising avocados from Mexico? I don’t really get how a fruit gets a radio advertisement endorsing its fabulous qualities (“it’s a great way to dress up tuna!”), but I would like to find out. Also it makes me laugh every time because WTF why are they advertising avocados on the radio? Everyone knows what an avocado is (delicious) and where you might procure one (at the grocery store, dummy).

Step 3: Fry up those eggs. The secret to a good fried egg with crispy edges is a lot of butter. You’re welcome!

Aside: I don’t think it’s possible to take an appetizing photo of eggs while they’re in the process of frying.

Steps 4-8: Toast your bagels. After toasting, spread a thick layer of your avocado mash/guacamole on top. Then slide a freshly fried egg on top, do some fancy stuff with sriracha, and serve. Eat like an open-face bagel and make a delicious mess. One is a completely sufficient, satisfying meal, but both is what you want.

Aside: the consumption of this meal is very messy so it’s a good way to test your relationships and friendships. Probably not the best thing to make if you’re still trying to woo someone, but if you’ve already finagled them into living with you and getting a bunch of dogs, go for it.

Aside-aside: last time I visited my BFF Chandler in Portland, she wanted to make me this great breakfast she invented, and it was this exact combination of ingredients, minus the sriracha. We’d both come up with it independently and both continued to make it over and over again. Are we an X-File?

Every so often (by which I mean for the past two years), I go through these phases (by which I mean always) where I become obsessed with brothy noodly asian soups. Pho? I could eat you all day everyday. Udon? Get in my belly. Tom Yum? You thrill me. Ramen? GIVE ME ALL THE RAMEN EVER I WILL EAT IT ALL.

That’s pretty much how it goes.

I know I don’t talk about my neighborhood in Brooklyn very often, but it’s great. Boerum Hill itself is very residential, but some really awesome places to eat and buy things have opened up in the last year or so that I’m all about. The very nearby Cobble Hill will always kind of be the cooler big brother when it comes to that stuff, so I feel extra-proud when my neighborhood represents.

The most exciting development in my life in the past couple of weeks, though, is that there is now a ramen place that has opened only a few blocks from my stoop. Which is not to say my life isn’t exciting (it isn’t, but that’s not the point), it’s to say that this is just VERY VERY exciting. The knowledge that this is so close by is doing terrible things for my mental state, wallet, and maybe soon, waistline. We’ve already been twice in the past week and the only reason I’m staying away is because I’m currently in Florida for a couple days and it is so far away. Which is maybe a good thing because I really need to slow my roll with this whole ramen thing.

Maybe. Although it’s probably a very bad thing and very tragic and all I want right now is ramen.

So this restaurant, Ganso, is now my new favorite place in the world, serving up some of my new favorite food in the world. The restaurant design itself is really beautiful (check all that amazing pine, yo), the food is great, and the staff is super friendly. I introduced myself to the owner, Harris, because I figured we’d be seeing a lot of each other and now I think we’re best friends?

It’s kind of on a weird dud of a block, but it’s right off the Hoyt-Schemerhorn stop (A/C/G) and close to a bunch of other subways and totally worth a little trip.

Ramen is my lifeblood and Ganso is the wind beneath my wings.

(I guess now I have to make clear that this post was in no way sponsored, I just fucking love ramen OK.)